As You Wish (The Summerhouse 3)

“I do,” Olivia said softly, eyes wide.

“Alan took our daughter to work and did his helpless act. He was soooo good at that. You ever know a man who did that?”

“Yes,” Olivia said. “Intimately.”

“So anyway, Alan told her I was a lazy ex-wife and he had no one to help him, et cetera. Six months later they were married. She divorced him two years after that. I know all this because she came to me to apologize for all the bad things she’d thought about me.”

“It wasn’t me,” Olivia whispered.

“You?” Willie said. “You can’t mean you and Alan. I can’t imagine you would ever fall for a do-nothing like Alan Trumbull.”

“Only if I had a trauma in my life so horrible that it made me feel like I deserved

to be treated badly.”

Willie looked at her for a moment. “That’s right. You’re a psychologist, aren’t you? Maybe I should make an appointment and talk about how bad Alan made me feel. He had me believing I didn’t deserve more than he gave me—which wasn’t much of anything.”

“What happened to Kevin?”

“Poor kid. He’s very much like his father. Married a couple of times, but they didn’t last long. No kids.”

“Was one of them a girl named Hildy?”

“Wow! You’ve got a good memory. He dated a big girl named Hildy when he was in his twenties. But by that time the appliance stores were failing. When she dumped Kevin, he was real upset about it. Personally, I think she wanted a man with money.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“Wasn’t she in that play you guys put on last year? That was great! I can’t believe you got two big-name movie stars here to little Summer Hill. You want some more tea?”

Olivia stood up. “I want to go see my home,” she said. “I want to remember all the good. And most of all, I want to forgive myself.”

Willie was looking at her as though she wasn’t quite sane. “Sure. I’ll show you out.”

As Olivia got into her car, all she could think was that Alan’s misery wasn’t her fault! Her ability to do things, to manage multiple appliance stores, to run a house, take care of a difficult child, all of it were things he wanted. But he’d made her feel...

Olivia had to pull over to the side of the road to bury her face in her hands and let herself cry. But it was a good cry, one of relief. She had carried so much guilt in her! During all those years she was married to Alan, she’d felt that she’d ruined his life. If she hadn’t gone after him, he would have found a sweet girl like Willie. They would have been a family and been happy.

But that wasn’t true! Alan got the woman he’d loved for so many years—but without Olivia supporting them by working six days a week, they weren’t happy. Willie said Alan was a parasite. But wasn’t that what Willie was too? The only thing she’d said about the husband she had now was that he could provide her with a good house and rings for her fingers.

Olivia looked out the windshield. She’d tried hard to give people what they said they wanted. Alan said he wanted more stores, more of her being a wife to him. By that he meant running the house as well as the stores. Taking care of Kevin, rescuing Kevin, trying to make Alan feel like a man.

Olivia began to smile. Willie was right in that Olivia would never have fallen for a man like Alan. He and his stores had been her punishment for the guilt she felt at losing her daughter.

But that hadn’t happened! For a moment, she closed her eyes and remembered seeing her beautiful daughter grow up. Tisha had been a quiet child who loved being with her parents wherever they went. For years, they were a happy threesome, content to follow Kit around the world. He’d come home and tell them they were to move to Yemen—or Dubai or Morocco.

Usually somewhere in the Middle East, as that was Kit’s area of expertise. He’d leave it to his wife and daughter to pack up and move. It was what Rowan said had been dumped on his mother and she couldn’t handle it. But Olivia had loved it!

Irony, she thought. Kit had loved what Olivia was good at, while Alan had hated it, been jealous of it. When she’d done something big in her life with Alan, he’d sneered at her, then said something meant to put her down. But with Kit, when she accomplished some huge task, he’d thanked her, praised her, whirled her around in his arms, and made love to her.

At the thought of the life she’d had with Kit, she smiled broadly. The smile started inside her, under her rib cage, then spread outward. Gradually, it took over her body—and that smile pushed out the guilt she’d carried all those many years she’d lived with Alan. Gone was the guilt about her daughter and the penance she’d paid for it by allowing Alan to endlessly punish her.

When the smile finally reached her lips, she knew she was a different person. No more guilt. Best of all, there would be no more looking back. No more regret.

Olivia started the car. She wanted to see her home. For all their travels, little Summer Hill, Virginia, had been where they called home.

When she pulled through the gate, she saw Young Pete and he gave her a half smile. She remembered how Kit and the caretaker had bonded as they worked together on the big estate. Kit’s early job at Tattwell had come in handy. Whenever he had a big decision to make, he grabbed the garden tools and went to work.

She parked by Diana’s Cottage—but that name was gone. By the door was a brass plaque that said DR. OLIVIA PAGET MONTGOMERY. PSYCHOLOGIST. As she touched the corner of it, more memories came back to her. Wherever they lived, she’d kept up her certification because she knew it was important. She hadn’t remembered Arrieta and her ability to change the past, but Olivia had been fierce about keeping up with her training. One time Kit had been quite unpleasant about her returning to the US to take some courses. He couldn’t go with her, so he’d used all his skills of persuasion to get her to stay. His argument was that she could let her credentials lapse and renew them later. But Olivia had stood her ground and told him no.